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Professor Roberts and his colleagues assumed that very short interventions would not do much to change personality—they expected that one hour, one day, or one week of intervention couldn’t budge the long-term dispositions of the study subjects—so they also included studies that involved long-term therapies lasting many months.

To determine how long someone has to continue an intervention like therapy before it has a positive effect on personality, the researchers plotted each treatment’s degree of impact according to its duration. When they charted the effect size versus the duration of a treatment, another unexpected discovery was revealed: Most positive changes in personality were achieved within the first month of therapy. After that, the rate of change leveled off and the benefits plateaued.

Additional treatment didn’t provide any incremental improvement, but the original personality benefits achieved during the first 30 days remained stable and continued long after the treatment ended. The graph below shows the increase from neuroticism to emotional stability according to the number of weeks in treatment.

The surprising conclusion from this science is clear: We can change our personalities if we choose to, and meaningful change can be achieved as quickly as 30 days. Also, a variety of self-help therapies work, so meaningful personality improvements don’t necessarily require the help of a trained professional.